A. Touch. Of. Class.

(Brought to you by the new "Quick Blog - You Tube" button on your overview page :P) 

This entry has nothing to do with Hawaii-5-0. But still, can you remember it? I wonder if it was good, or if I just remember it well because of the funky music and the catch phrase...

Anyway.

• I'm stagnating again on the second book, this time stagnation has hit at 15,000 words. Too many to even consider giving up, but I may well pop it on the back burner for a little while.  Or I may delete the last 3000 words as I'm not really happy with them, I was trying to build up but I think it needs some action there to set the scene.  I'm just worried in case I fall short of the target length.
  
  
• I really like not having the CAPTCHA letters on this site anymore - I think while being one of the subtlest changes in the changeover it will make a big difference, so props to the programmers.
  
  
• In other news I want to know where the sun went! It seems to have disappeared up north and it's not fair!
  

Okay, not exactly, but I do remember; when it was red with the punky girl up top, when it was white and grey and powerful, when it was blue with the jumping beach girl (although, let's be honest, that was this morning so it's not a big thing to remember!) and now we have the latest incarnation.

There are lots of good new features which I go into in more depth over at customer support. 

I hope everyone's finding their way around and not having any problems but if you do just give me a shout here or on customer support and I'll try to help. 

Beyond that, have good weekends! 

• Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?
  - Booking Through Thursday
  

Ah, I have quite a few wordy type books, although nothing to improve my grammar as such. Three or dictionary type one and the fourth is about structure and such in novels. They are...

The Oxford Popular English Dictionary & Thesaurus
(Old dependable, everyone has one of these, right?)

Foyle's Philavery
(This is great, lovely book full of random strange and under-used words)

Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors
(lots of usages and spellings, people and places)

How Novels Work - John Mullan
(Structure, style and devices, mainly.)

Something that is in the Sports News a lot at the moment is how the ECB plan to respond to the IPL.  There have been a number of ideas circulated about starting a new English Premier League with city-based franchises and all the other hype that seems to go with Twenty20 cricket.

My concern is that the Cricket World is risking ruining a centuries old sport (Remember Cricket as an organised sport pre-dates Football) for the sake of a quick buck.  Twenty20 is exciting, yes, and the idea of having a game that lasts only thee hours is good for getting crowds.  However, it's not proper cricket.  It's a smash fest, it's uncouth, no one plays themself in, they just come out and flail the bat around for a while.  It's fun to watch and play so we should have it, but they need to be careful that in throwing money at this new version of the game they don't critically undermine the Test and County game.

In the IPL you have already had a cricketer strike another.  Forgive me for being clichéd but that's really just not cricket.  This isn't football, it's supposed to be more civil.  I think they should pass a rule now that if anyone ever strikes another player they're out of all cricket for a year. Strike an umpire you're out for life.

I am relieved to see that Giles Clarke, chief of the ECB is against the idea of City Franchises.  That's not how British sports work, we have clubs with history and tradition and supporters who are reflective of all kinds of social and historic factors.  The idea that you can just create 8-10 new franchises isn't going to work, nor is merging counties as often the counties next to each other have huge rivalries.

I think the only solution is to restructure the county game and simplify it.  Have 4-day county cricket as it is, then have only one one-day tournament - make it a cup so all counties go into little mini groups then a straight knock out.  For the Twenty20 we need to stick with the counties, yes make the teams from each county have some kind of distinct personality, but stick with the counties and spend the money promoting the league nationally and branding the teams, making a decent media package.  Cricket would be more popular here if we could ever watch it, but unless you go to the games you can only see internationals - and those only if you have Sky Sports.

India can have their super-orgasmo-premiero-bollywood league or whatever it's called; it's entertaining but it's just not the right structure for Britain.  The ECB need to get their heads together seriously over the coming weeks and decide on a strategy that mixes the traditions of British Sport with the entertainment value of IPL. 

So as it would turn out I'm about eight years behind on this, but I've just been watching some of Simon Schama's History of Britain.  It seems that when there is so much talk of what should and shouldn't be on the National Curriculum for History the government could do a lot worse than dedicating time while history is compulsory (pre year nine, I believe) and have the pupils watch something like this. I know it does not go into any depth but what it would do would be give an overview.  It amazes me how little of our history actually gets taught any more - even when I went to school there were huge swaths of it just missed out.  Surely it would be wiser to try and give a good overview to get a basic groundwork of knowledge in place and then to work from that for those pupils who want to study it further?

Our history is so fascinating and all the more so when told by a good story teller.  I think that part of the problem could be that we're so fact orientated that it gets in the way of the narrative.  Apart from people who study history no one needs to remember the date of Bannockburn or the number of chaps killed, so instead of going on about facts and figures History should be taught as narrative. 

This starts me thinking that I should perhaps read Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples again.  It's a magnificent work and the thing about Churchill is he has not only passion but also narrative skill.  It's not always 100% accurate because it naturally leans to his view point and it's sometimes unclear the quality of his sources, but it's a magnificent work and gives a good strong overview of the complete history of this country.  While a historian may be able to pick at some of the figures, the story is right. However, and this is what stops me picking it up again so eagerly, it is huge and it will eat your life, despite all of his merits even the abridgement is a slog.  Still, I think it's perhaps worth giving it another read this summer, this time I'll have some light fiction on the go at the same time to break it up a little.  Maybe it isn't so long as I remember after all.  (I hope that last bit convinced you as it didn't convince me at all)